An Unexpected Bonus

Several weeks ago, our son Travis called to ask us if we knew any place where he could get a couple of 55-gallon metal drums for one of his many projects around his place up in Alabama. He said they were hard to find around Tuscaloosa, and since they only have a compact car, getting one home would be difficult even if they could find any.

I looked and found somebody in DeLand, about 25 miles from us, who had a bunch of them for sale for $20 each, and I made a mental note to myself to contact them before our trip up there. Then, while browsing through the local Facebook Marketplace on Monday evening, I saw that somebody in Daytona Beach had some listed for free, just come and pick them up. I mentioned it to Terry, and not 15 minutes later, Travis called to ask me if I had managed to find any drums that I could bring to him when we visit in a couple of weeks. I told him he must be reading my mind, and I texted the person with the free barrels and arranged to go by yesterday and pick a couple of them up.

We left here about 2:45 yesterday afternoon, headed to Daytona Beach, and before long, we ran into an absolute downpour. I told Terry I thought we were probably going to look like a couple of drowned rats by the time we loaded the barrels into the truck. The closer we got, the harder it rained, and I really wasn’t looking forward to that. But then, magically, about three blocks from our destination, the rain stopped coming down and the heavy cloud cover broke up.

As it turns out, the place we were going to manufactures and distributes CBD and medical marijuana products. My contact there was a very nice man who put three of the barrels into the back of the truck.

I thanked him, and we talked for a few minutes and I mentioned how well medical marijuana oil and gummies help my back pain and how I no longer use the opiates that the VA had been giving me for years. He told me to hold on a minute and went inside and came back out with a box full of CBD gummies and some pain relief oil. What a nice bonus!

From there, we stopped at Florida Gun Exchange because I wanted to pick up some shotgun shells and clay targets to do some informal trap shooting when we got up to Travis’ house. This was a time when I should have kept my mouth shut, because they had a pallet full of cases of 10 boxes each of 12 gauge ammunition and the sign said $109. Then I noticed that on the other side of the display, the sign for the same boxes of ammunition said $139. I found a clerk and asked him what the difference was because it looked like the same ammo, and he admitted that he was supposed to change that price because it had been a weekend deal and had ended Monday. He was a new employee and was afraid he might get fired, so I didn’t push the issue and went ahead and paid the higher price.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any clay pigeons, and in calling around, they seem to be rather scarce. I found some on Amazon, but they were overpriced, so I will keep looking.

We stopped at Salsas Cocina, Terry’s favorite local Mexican restaurant, for dinner, and the service was much better this time than on our last visit there. I am sure the last time was just a case of new help trying to learn how the restaurant did things.

When we got back to Edgewater, we stopped at Walgreens to pick up a prescription for eye drops for Terry’s eyes and then came home for an evening of relaxing in our recliners and watching television. Today we have to go back to Titusville for her second post-op examination, and hopefully, that will be the last one. Terry is seeing improvement in both eyes every day and said she was glad she had the cataract surgery done.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – The bad news is that you can’t have it all. The good news is that you don’t need it all.